Before You Buy a Traditional Sauna

So you’re thinking about buying a sauna. If you’re just getting started and you’re out there on the Internet reading anything with the word “sauna” in it, trying to get a feel for what it all means, you may feel slightly overwhelmed. Be advised that there’s a lot of information floating around out there that may be well-intentioned but which is inaccurate nonetheless.

So the question remains: “Which sauna experience is the right one for me, and what kind does Almost Heaven Saunas provide?” At Almost Heaven Saunas, we want you to make well-informed decisions so that you may select the exact sauna experience you want and the right sauna to match. For that reason, we’ve provided some very basic explanations to some typical terms that you might run into when shopping around for a sauna.

Sauna

A true sauna experience, according to traditional Finnish standards, involves a heater and stones. If the stones are dry, you have what’s called a dry sauna experience; if you ladle a small amount of water onto the heated stones, it creates a burst of steam, adding humidity to the air, and you then have what’s called a wet sauna experience.

Here at Almost Heaven Saunas, we proudly make saunas according to traditional Finnish standards.

Steam Room

Saunas and steam rooms are often confused as being the same thing, but they are quite different. A steam room has hot mist that is created by a steam generator and sprayed through nozzles located throughout the room. The room is tiled and is often used in conjunction with a shower.

A traditional barrel sauna

Infrared

While an infrared room is often called a sauna, it is not an accurate description in the true sense of the word. Since neither hot stones nor water are used, an infrared room does not meet the definition of a sauna. Instead, an infrared room generates heat from the infrared portion of the light spectrum. The whole point of an infrared room is that it delivers heat therapy without getting extremely hot. Rather than the room getting hot from a central heat, the infrared rays penetrate the body and are delivered from several heaters located throughout the room.